String Wars, Part Deux

Yesterday at the KITP in Santa Barbara, George Johnson gave a second talk and led a discussion on the subject of the “String Wars”. The rather remarkable first session was discussed here, here and here. This time people were much better behaved, and the main topic was the media coverage of physics in general, and the past history of the media interest in string theory, and what effects this might have had.

Johnson has put on his web-site copies of various articles from the NYTimes about string theory. The first mention of superstrings was in a piece by Walter Sullivan back in May 1985, just a few months after the “First Superstring Revolution” really got going. This piece included cautionary comments from C.N. Yang about the lack of even “a single experimental hint” and from Michael Green that “I’ve seen many bandwagons come and go.” Interestingly, already at this time the main suggested test of string theory was astrophysical or cosmological, with the Times referring to a recent Nature article about the possibility of seeing effects of the “shadow matter” that one gets from the other E8 in the E8 x E8 model popular back then (and still popular to this day).

Much of the KITP discussion concerned what effect news stories and popular books promoting string theory have had, with several people noting that they think they have been responsible for the large number of students they have seen wanting to do graduate work in string theory. Someone in the audience also pointed out that the continual use of the modifier “super” seems to get people’s attention, with students showing up wanting to study “supersymmetry” even though they didn’t know what it was, and it was much harder to get them interested in, say, “diffractive scattering.”

The latest Nature Physics has a fairly sensible editorial (Tied Up With String?) about the string theory controversy. Popular promotion of string theory continues today at Stanford, where the Wonderfest Festival of Science is featuring Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind discussing “Is the World Made of Strings?”

exactly. 1000ft or not, Steve Giddings made a very important comment. Founding agencies care about media coverage. That’s not good but likely true. I also find public outreach an essential part of science, but its not good to distribute research grants according to the efforts invested in advertisement. Something is going wrong there…

The blog of Christine Dantas now contains only format material, and this statement

“Monday, November 06, 2006
The end.
I’ll only leave the post by Daniele Oriti on his upcoming book on Quantum Gravity and on his current research.”

and the post by Daniele Oriti which discusses, inter alia,
“… Group Field Theory … as field theories describing the quantum dynamics of the fundamental discrete building blocks of (quantum) space … they offer an altogether new perspective on the issue of the continuum approximation and on the emergence of a continuum spacetime. … It is the problem of showing that in certain situations (to be identified) the fundamental ‘atoms of space’ described by some GFT -condense-, so that a continuum spacetime emerges as a sort of liquid …”,
which ideas sound very interesting to me.

Christine, thanks very much for leaving up the interesting ideas of Daniele Oriti,
and also thanks for an interesting blog as well as comments to other blogs.
I also liked very much Pedro’s “Outer Space”.

Your contributions will be missed, and I hope that you will come back when you want to.

the continual use of the modifier ’super’ seems to get people’s attention, with students showing up wanting to study ’supersymmetry’ even though they didn’t know what it was

Are students also lured into solid state physics this way? By superconductors? Or by superfluidity? Maybe by the desire to learn about the supersolid state of helium? Maybe even by studies of superconducting superfluids?

I’m sad to see what happened here. Her blog was an excellent example of a positive contribution and one of the best in this are. The fact that the controversy over string theory made it so difficult for her to keep doing what she was doing, mainly about LQG, without getting caught up in an environment she didn’t have the temperament for, is very unfortunate.

Thanks for the link to PF, it makes me feel slightly better. I just sent Christine a long email apologizing for my last comment. I feel really bad about it since it seems I did upset her quite a lot. I can’t even remember exactly what I wrote, just that I didn’t like the insulting side remarks in Schroer’s paper, that this is not going to solve any problem, and that it surprised me she would post this writing. 1/2 hour later there were several other comments whose exact content I can’t recall, and a last comment from Christine saying it’s been enough, or something.

It makes me very sad to see her go, since her blog has been very balanced on various topics, and I’ve always liked to read it. On the other hand, I can relate to her problem with the journalist… – and I guess most of you around here know that at some point it just takes too much time, and effort, to set every misconception straight, and one wonders whether it’s worth it.

I also want to add for those of you who follow the so-called string wars only via the media and the internet: the picture you get from what is actually happening is badly distorted. There is some truth in what is written, but for most of the time we get along pretty well and peacefully, and just do our research. How it comes across in journal articles, or blogs, is like putting magnifying glasses on a spot on your nose and then getting obsessed about it.

Yes, there’s some discussion about where the money goes and how to hire people, but that discussion has always been there, and probably will always be there, unless some government realizes that theoretical physics needs a grant increase of at least two orders of magnitude. Yes, there are reasons not to like string theory, there are also reasons not to like LQG, but there’s no reason to retreat to name-calling and insults. If anything, I’d wish we’d focus on our similarities, the scientific goals that we want to achieve, the reason why we went to study physics in the first place.

I think, this was roughly the last sentence of my comment on Christine’s blog.

I have participated in this blog for a couple of month always trying to stick to physics, I think almost all my contributions had a physics content. Having been insulted by anonymous bloggers and by you know who, I have nevertheless stuck to the scientific content.
Please will anybody let me know where in my last contribution I insulted somebody? I break taboos (but so does the owner of this blog), but this has nothing to do with insults. Bee, you have all the advantages of anonimity on your side which I do not enjoy, please let me know the insult I committed so I can correct this or appologize.

PS – Bee said “… most of the time we get along pretty well and peacefully, and just do our research …”. That does not apply to those of us who are blacklisted by arXiv,
unless Bee considers blacklistees to be outcast nonpersons.

I sent a corrected version of my paper to Peter, and I am sure that if he will be back from his book presentation tour he will do the change. According to my best knowledge neither version contains insults. The new version has some more remarks about the history of the recent great profound discoveries of the implementation of diffeomorphism covariance and the sufficient condition for obtaining diffeomorphism invariance. The story starts with the construction of the local covariant energy-momentum tensor by Wald and reaches its present culmination in the two papers I cite (unfortunately not my own!). I am a particle physicists and the advanced particle physics methods have impressed me more than anything else. Is that insulting to the Perimeter or to KITP?

Yes. I did not say your paper had no physics content, and I am aware of your contributions, which are interesting in many regards.

I made it explicitly clear that I was not referring to the scientific part of your text. What I can’t approve of are general and unbalanced accusations of ‘mass psychosis’, ‘mass cult’, ‘the scientific version of Stalinism’ and ‘faith based mantra’, etc. This is just plain insulting for many string theorists, who are highly qualified serious researchers. A picture of string theorists being blind worshippers of some mass cult is as far off of reality as that of ‘alternatives’ eating muesli and reading Faust. Both of which are prejudices that I don’t want to see distributed, no matter what reason you have to justify your claims: it’s not going to help matters — if anything it will increase the gap that I sense dividing our community (meaning: theoretical physicists). If we are going to disagree, we should stay on scientific ground.

Dear Tony,

There are definitely things at odds in the way science is pursued today, and the arxiv policies are a mystery not only to you. Regarding the question whether the community today does too easily ‘outcast nonpersons’, Lee Smolin makes some good points in his book there. Yes, these are issues that we should work on, but not by calling other’s theories crackpotism or faith based science. This is not constructive. My remark above referred to the fact that the string theorists I have met are not more or less weird, aggressive, naive or stubborn than theoretical physicists of other research directions (and I should add, there is more to theoretical physics than strings and loops).

What bothers me, and you can already see this from this comment section, is that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. E.g. to come back to the original topic of Peter’s post: how come there’s been so little discussion of this second part, but an enormous fuss about the first one? In this second part there were some important (though hardly new) points raised: as I wrote above, Steve pointed out that founding agencies might care about the media coverage – this is certainly of some concern. Someone mentioned (what I’ve also pointed out before), that the ‘string wars’ currently are a very US-centered phenomenon. Then there was a very interesting contribution about whether or not such media coverage as on the string-issue today does influence young students. And if it does influence, in which way, etc.

Best,

B.

PS: Bee, you have all the advantages of anonimity on your side which I do not enjoy,

My name is Sabine Hossenfelder, as you can easily find out from my blog. You get plenty of details about me by googling my name. In fact, I do think that anonymity is one of the big problems in this equation. E.g. it seems to me that there are only a hand full of people echoing always the same silly sentences (it’s quite ironing that George Johnson began his first talk trying to make that point but nobody was really listening, they were all too busy echoing).

There is one thing that I would like to point out in this discussion. Bert Schroer was absolutely not responsible for the ending of my blog! I encourage everyone interested to read his paper. It is a polemical paper, yes. But it does have important scientific comments that are deserved to be widely read and studied.

I pointed out over at PF that one of the reasons that I decided to end the blog was that I was not having a good time dealing with polemics. So after posting Bert’s paper over at my blog, this feeling that I just was tired of dealing with polemics came out and I decided it was time to stop. This was a process that was already happening for some time.

So, my last word on this issue here is: I appreciate Bert Schroer’s criticism on string theory and his paper should be read with care. I do think there are some points that he could have written differently, but that’s not what matters here.

I publicaly apologize to Bert Schroer in the case that this was the impression I have given (that he was responsible for my decision to end my blog). Not at all.

Dear Sabine,
Now I know who you are (inasmuch as this is possible from weblogs). There is a generation gap between us. I have seen impressive progress in particle physics when there was no necessity to think about sociological aspects of science and nobody (myself included) would use the style of communication as nowadays in weblogs but even in papers, whereas you have grown up already in this deep crisis of particle physics in the times of market values.
I spend 6 years under Stalinism (my neighboor in school was Helmut Karasek). When we use the adjective “Stalinist” nowadays we mean total reality denial coupled with the internalized belief that the worse things get so much the better the glorious destination. I know that we have entered such a situation in physics, I am not saying this to insult you or anybody else. People can be very intelligent and serious and nevertheless being misled. Seriousness and intelligence are of course necessary but by themselves no guaranty for innovative insights. You misunderstood me completely if you think that I am denying the intelligence and dedication to people in ST or LQG for that matter.
I used to think that hype, mass psychosis and collective delusion can only occur outside of science (Nazism, Stalin ism.. can be updated) but never in science. Well this is not true; we were only lucky that it hit us so late (see the remarks of Phil Anderson). If you feel that this does not concern or affect you that is fine, then just forget it and look at the scientific aspects. Maybe you can see that the scientific world is not yet completely dominated by those communities which are doing their best to steer particle physics into their barren mono cultures, but there are still some concrete individuals (which Smolin describes abstractly), which are not only in the possession of an underlying philosophy, but also have very balanced harmonizing conceptual and technical skills (as in the good times of Feynman. Schwinger…), but maybe not for long anymore; they cannot be globalized and they cannot have descendants.

And again, to make it clear: No one is responsible for the ending of my blog, except myself. I openly apologize to anyone who believe that I have damaged them for some reason, and that includes you, Bee.

I have created the blog and I have destroyed it. It was just a blog. It was useful, nice, interesting? Good, I am happy I did something useful in this life! Now it’s gone, like many things in life I suppose…

Thanks for this statement. Please understand that in my perception your writing can easily be misunderstood as being insulting, even if you didn’t mean it to.

whereas you have grown up already in this deep crisis of particle physics in the times of market values.

Well, there will always be parts of science that flourish and others that people loose interest in because it doesn’t seem to go anywhere. So far I haven’t considered myself as growing up in a scientific crisis. As you also say, if there’s a crisis then it is not simply one of scientific research, but a much more general one. Many of the concerns about ethic values, or competition on the ‘marketplace of xxxx’, people blindly following fashions, etc definitely aren’t specific for string theory, just apply them to any other field you can think of, from politics to the cosmetic industry.

If you feel that this does not concern or affect you that is fine, then just forget it and look at the scientific aspects.

It does certainly concern and affect me, otherwise I wouldn’t be here spending my time writing this comment. I just think it would be better to disentangle the sociological criticism from the actual research.

Best,

B.

PS: My comment from above overlapped with yours, so I hadn’t read your comment when I wrote mine.

Of the three – “hype, psychosis and collective delusion”, I think the only one applicable to string theory is hype. Since Stalinism and Nazism involved physical coercion of their opponents, they are utterly inapplicable and inappropriate to physics. Perhaps a more appropriate analogy, if one needs to be found, is that of a stock market bubble. It is not necessary to elaborate on the analogy.

My rather cryptic line from above referred to a typo in my earlier comment — obviously, it didn’t mean to write ‘ironing’… 😉 There’s no need to apologize, and I don’t feel specifically damaged. I hope this is the right decision for you, and you’ll be around. Best,

Bert,
One of the sad but unavoidable things about science on a limited budget is that someone’s career is going to get ‘destroyed’. Someone, somewhere, is going to have to quit and leave science. It might happen in high school, or graduate school or somewhere along the tenure track. But it more or less has to happen somewhere.
Given that physics jobs are neither being created nor destroyed but only transformed from one form to another, I have often been confused about what element of this string theory debate isn’t just a isolated power struggle between different physicists. On the one hand you have string theorists who are presumably trying to make advances in theoretical physics. On the other hand, you have other non-string theorists who feel the same way and are doing the same thing. Where is the symmetry broken?
You could call what the string theorists are doing similar to Stalinism (ie organization for malicious purposes) or you can call it Fordism (after Ford of Ford motor cars, or organization for positive and effective purposes).

Bee said “… What bothers me … is that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. …”.

Maybe the lack of constructive criticism is a direct consequence of the validity of Feynman’s criticism:
“… I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations …”.

If superstrings predicted a quark mass and LQG predicted a different quark mass,
then
the old physics process of comparison with experiment (which old process did lead to the last Big Thing in theoretical particle physics, the Standard Model) could settle the question of which (if either) model is realistic.

In the absence of what Feynman wanted, the only thing left for superstrings and LQG in their fight for funds is to engage in “name-calling”.
Further,
if an alternative model DOES produce realistic numbers, the only way they can fight for funds against it is to “outcast” alternative model-builders as “nonpersons”.

Therefore, it seems to me that, given human nature,
and the present state of superstring and LQG models (which get about 90% and 10%, respectively, of the theoretical particle physics funding in the USA),
it is inevitable
“… that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. …”
and
that blacklisting exists.

That is true, and experiments are still providing relevant important data.
For example,
as Tomaso Dorigo said on his blog at http://dorigo.wordpress.com/ by post dated 26 October 2006:
“… WZ production discovered!
… Yesterday the CDF collaboration blessed a new result on electroweak physics: the measurement of cross section of the production of WZ pairs. …
we want to test the Standard Model … in [ all ] the available realm of predictions it makes. The rarer a process, the better the chances that something does not agree with the theory …
Now that we start seeing the very rare standard model processes yielding multi-leptons … we still see no new physics …”.

In short,
new data is coming out, and it confirms the Standard Model,
with no non-Standard-Model-stuff like the supersymmetry of superstring theory.

The superstring and LQG models are not failing to meet Feynman’s standards for want of data.
They are failing to meet Feynman’s standards because,
even after decades of work by many very smart people,
they have failed to produce calculations that describe ANY of the particle masses, force strengths, Kobayashi-Maskawa parameters, much less to predict the WZ results stated by Tomaso Dorigo.

That indicates to me that alternative approaches should be given substantial support.

I would prefer that superstring and LQG funding remain level on the chance that maybe somehow those workers might some day figure out a way to do some of the calculations that Feynman wanted,
and
that new money be appropriated for alternative approaches.

The quest for new money for high energy physics theory alternative approaches
should (in my opinion)
be as important as the quest for new money for high energy experiments such as the ILC.

Since the amounts of new money needed for theory are far less than the amounts needed for such things as the ILC,
it should be at least as easy to get additional theory money as to get ILC money.
Perhaps the theory increase could be folded into ILC proposals.

PS – Now that the Democrats have won control of the USA House of Representatives,
Dennis Hastert ( Illinois Republican ) will probably be replaced as Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi ( California Democrat ).
The USA high energy experimental community has strongly advocated an Illinois (Fermilab) site for the ILC, in large part to get support of Hastert as Speaker of the House.
Maybe the USA high energy experimental community should rethink its advocacy of an Illinois site in favor of a California site, which is not only the home of Speaker-to-be Pelosi, but is also on the Pacific Coast and therefore possibly more acceptable to other Pacific nations such as Japan.

speculations about quantum gravity have been fruitless: this causes struggles among physicists. In healthy fields (like cosmology, neutrinos and hopefully particle physics in 2010) struggles are about physics.

The “supers” I cited were names for properties. So is the “super” in “supersymmetry”.

I think marketing considerations do go into the naming of some theories, a classic example being “quintessence.”

I agree, that’s a good example (since it is such a bad example: what a horrible term).
Whether similar considerations made people say “super” instead of “graded” back in the old days I can’t say. But I am somehow doubting it.

I know that, as a a student, I found the plethora of “supers” in physics appaling. (But then, that’s also my reaction to most kinds of advertisement, so maybe there is a point 🙂

The “super” in superconductivity and superfluidity has the meaning of “ultra” (trans, alem) whereas in supersymmetry it is hegemony, arrogance and domination; this was its only purpose and everybody knows that. It in no way goes beyond symmetry and contains it in a limit or by a phase transition. Once such a misleading name has been given and used for some time it cannot be changed (the word “string” in string theory is another case, from the point of view of quantum localization it still continues to be point-like localized, it has many more degrees of freedom as the irreducible object of QFT which is a free field). I wish Urs would stop posting such nonsense on this weblog which after all is dedicated to a critical evaluation of string theory and not about stupid names.
Peter, can you please finally exchange the first version of my draft (the one which I sent to yesterday); on a server I could make a replacement on my own, but here I cannot do it. My original purpose (when I dedicated it to the anniversary of Christine’s weblog) was to present a profound analysis of all the claims in ST (I think I did not forget any) in order to get a scientific discussion going and I thought that this would have been a good place because it is also visited by LQG researchers. All the people who bothered her should address me directly after having red the corrected version (which I again kindly ask Peter to post).

“but there are still some concrete individuals (which Smolin describes abstractly), which are not only in the possession of an underlying philosophy, but also have very balanced harmonizing conceptual and technical skills (as in the good times of Feynman. Schwinger…), but maybe not for long anymore; they cannot be globalized and they cannot have descendants.”

Anon
you just have to look at the updated last section of my paper (which Peter hopefully will substitute today). A fascinating story started at the beginning of the 90s by Bob Wald’s work about how to define the correct energy-momentum tensor in QFT in CST and culminated tentatively in startling results about diffeomorphism- covariance and its expected quantum invariance. The story is certainly continuing and I (as somebody with a particle physics background) am very excited about it. It is completely within an (albeit advanced, you may not like this) particle physics (QFT) setting and does not create those large distances with particle physics as we know it from the other approaches. It is certainly closer to LQG than to string theory (that was the reason why I thought that Christine’s weblog would have been a good place) if only the LQG people would notice it. Just be patient for a couple of hours.

oh no! I lost my comment… what a waste of time… what was I about to say? … I’ll try again…

Dear Tony,

high energy particle physics just might not be the way to proceed. Imo it’s currently much more promising to focus on cosmology/astrophysics. We already have evidence for physics that can’t be explained within the standard model, the data is good, and getting better every year. If you think about it, collider experiments aren’t exactly the smartest thing do to. It’s like examining leftovers of a car accident and trying to figure out what the driver ordered for dinner the evening before. Yes, that might not be good news for particle physicists, and yes, everything was better in the old days, when we were all younger, when the gasoline was less expensive, and the music was still music, but that’s the way life goes.

it is inevitable “… that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. …”

It is not. Name-calling is a cheap and easy way to get attention, whereas constructive criticism requires time and thought. Blogs seem to favor an atmosphere of fast and unreflected comments and reward upsetting statements far more than qualified opinions. Unfortunately, this is more and more used by the media – in print as well as online – to strongly polarize discussion and to artificially enhance disagreements that otherwise wouldn’t excite anybody. This then feeds back into the discussion in an upward spiral.

You decide for yourself what you pay attention to. That’s a good starting point I’d say.

Maybe Bee, but I do not see how you can base your Astrophysics/Cosmology on such a shaky particle physics basis as we have now (i.e. how you can live with everytime more precise astrophysical observations and a shaky basis of fundamental interactions which according to you does not need improvements).
I like your comparisions with car crashes but none of the big car-manufacturers would sell anything without the security improvements of controlled car crashes. The LHC may not do miracles expected by ST (perhaps less so by LQG), but at least the hope to close some of the open ends seems to me realistic.

Bee quoted me out of context as saying “it is inevitable “… that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. …””
and
then hit the out-of-context straw man by saying “It is not. …”.

The very important omitted context was
“given human nature,
and the present state of superstring and LQG models (which get about 90% and 10%, respectively, of the theoretical particle physics funding in the USA),
it is inevitable
“… that name-calling gets far more attention than any kind of constructive criticism. …””.

In that context, I stand by my statement because:

1 – Human nature in fights over funding in the present-day USA, where money is GOD, is that anything goes. Just as in political campaigns (for example the Tennessee Senate race), name-calling etc can be very effective. In fact, the physics funding fights look a lot like political campaigns.

2 – The present state of superstring and LQG models is that neither of them can make any substantive particle physics predictions, so that “constructive criticism” fails because neither class of models has any concrete particle physics calculations that can be constructively criticized. As John Baez said in a blog comment on Ars Mathematica:

“… The unpleasant nature of the whole extended argument can be seen as a collective cry of agony on the part of physicists trying and – so far – failing to find a theory that goes beyond the Standard Model and general relativity. Both string theorists and their opponents are secretly miserable over this failure. …”.

how you can live with everytime more precise astrophysical observations and a shaky basis of fundamental interactions which according to you does not need improvements).

I never said that our basis of fundamental interactions does not need improvement. This is not my opinion. I said that I find it very possible that astrophysical/cosmological data can give us the clues that collider physics hasn’t yet delivered.

The LHC may not do miracles expected by ST (perhaps less so by LQG), but at least the hope to close some of the open ends seems to me realistic.

Yes. There’s a reason why I’ve worked on LHC physics for the last years.

Dear Tony,

sorry for cutting your sentence in a confusing place. I still disagree with you. Human nature in fights over funding in the present-day USA, where money is GOD, is that anything goes. […] the physics funding fights look a lot like political campaigns. . Indeed, but there’s no reason to throw hands up and say: well, it’s in the human nature to adore money as GOD, and its inevitable to retreat to name-calling, that’s just how we are. Maybe my picture of humankind is just much more optimistic, or call it naive, but I don’t believe it’s actually money that we are searching for — Instead, it’s what we think it represents. Especially in the scientific community we should be able to realize that on the long run the winner won’t be the one who has the best rhetorical skills. Everything else is shortsighted, and hinders progress. Think future. Sadly enough, I agree on what Baez said.

Sabine, I agree with Bert when he says that particle physics is in a deep crisis considering the huge industry that went into virtually no gain of robust knowledge and deep understanding over the last twenty years. Your present opinion reminds me of my first three postdoc years when I didn’t see anything wrong either in scientifically dealing with extra dimensions, susy and the like. In my case I only slowly started to develop a belly ache about what was happening around me, slowly but steadily. I would say people like Bert naturally have a more global view on things because of their richer experience. My opinion is that in Bert’s case this experience serves constructively and courageously to change things for the better, he has demonstrated his scientific and social integrity in a number of ways …

Bee says that her “… picture of humankind is just much more optimistic …”.

I hope that Bee is right and I am wrong.

I would like very much to see (especially in the scientific community) that

competition is among IDEAS ( all relevant ideas being considered ) with the outcome being decided by comparison with experiments

rather than

among people saying things like “You know, if you know Lee [Smolin], it’s because he wants our money. It’s because he doesn’t have it that he wants to cut us down. …” (quote from a KITP person in the first Johnson String Wars talk) with the outcome being decided by dictates of authority / political power.

Sabine, I agree with Bert when he says that particle physics is in a deep crisis considering the huge industry that went into virtually no gain of robust knowledge and deep understanding over the last twenty years. Your present opinion reminds me of my first three postdoc years when I didn’t see anything wrong either in scientifically dealing with extra dimensions, susy and the like.

I see a lot of things going wrong, and I do agree that there’s been an unfortunate pursuit of research directions that didn’t pay off. However, I don’t see this as reason to get depressed, and proclaim a crisis in physics. If the LHC doesn’t fulfill our dreams, well, then lets look elsewhere. E.g. in the CMB.

Even though I’ve worked on extra dimensions, that’s been mostly politically motivated. I admit that I’m not particularly proud of that, but at least I still have a job. As far as I am concerned, that is what’s going wrong. I don’t see a crisis in high energy particle physics, I see a problem with the way research directions and people are chosen and supported, for all further details, read Lee’s book, he writes roughly what I also think, just skip the first three parts (and take off the cover).

I am genuinely sorry to hear about your bad experiences. I was stupid enough to listen to the first talk, so I’ve heard all that crap. I would like very much to see (especially in the scientific community) that competition is among IDEAS ( all relevant ideas being considered ) with the outcome being decided by comparison with experiments

So would I! I encourage you to make proposals at to how the present situation can be improved in your opinion, or to distribute suggestions made elsewhere. If we have to echo something, then that’s what we should echo.

Anonymous,

Isn’t that enough to begin with? I think one shouldn’t mix up the diverse data that lead us to postulate DM/DE, I find that very dangerous. E.g. the evidence for DE from high redshift supernovae, and that from WMAP. Then there’s (with some statistical significance) the alignment of the low multipol moments (Joao’s axis of evil), evidence for DE from structure formation, rotation curves of galaxies (yes, it’s handy to explain both by the same stuff, but do we actually know that?) and why is DM clustered in which galaxies how, do we understand that? Then (if I recall that correctly) there’s a problem with the voids between visible structures (they are too large), what about the Pioneer anomaly, the missing GZK cutoff (okay, data isn’t too good here, but should become better soon)? I also think there are some mysteries about the WMAP data, see e.g. the north-south asymmetry… Hey, I am not even a cosmologist and can come up with all that!

The corrected version of my article ST “deconstructed” is now available where Peter yesterday placed the previous version:http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=489#comment-18997
For starting a critical evaluation of its content (a critical evaluation of all claims ST made which I am aware of) this may not be a good place, so I should perhaps ask Peter to post it at a more visible and accessible place.
There is of course no insult there since you can only insult individual persons and not areas of research as ST or LQG. When the subject of critique is an area of research (and naturally the associated monoculture of a globalized community) then one may be breaking a taboo, but this could hardly be called an insult. Critique and even taboo breaking is the oxygen of science (not only particle physics) and anybody who wants to regiment this may as well close down physics departments and research institutions. Nobody is served by acting according to the maxim: Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen (I do not know how to translate this into English)
My formulation is sometimes a bit shrill, but it is my experience that if one does not penetrate the elevated noise level of the globalized market, the message will not be noticed, as interesting and important it may be (I gave an illustration of this in the epilogue of my article). Of course the level must be proportioned to the content of the message, and I hope that I did not trespass this elementary rule.
It would be very productive if one could get a discussion about those 7 or 8 claims from ST which I exposed as being flawed in the above paper. This would give me the chance to (in a later stage) post something onto the hep-th server which has been brought to a public test. If the details of my arguments are to scars or unclear I can try to be more explicit. Of course string theorists are very welcome, especially in case I misunderstood any of their claims.

Dear Christine,
we had several email exchanges and there was at no time a problem or tension between us. Nevertheless I think it is nice to mention this also publicly and to express my sadness about having lost the most informative and equilibrated Brazilian weblog.
Already before you closed down your weblog you mentioned the problems outside your control which caused doubts whether the effort is worth it. You told me that you are not located at one of the great scientific centers in Brazil and that your have virtually no contact with the national physics community. I advised you to only continue as long as you get some satisfaction and enrichment of knowledge but that you should not do this for years only because your weblog became institutionalized. I also mentioned that Brazil as a result of the large distances between places of scientific activities and the grown number of researchers should have 3-4 weblogs and it would be nice if you could continue up to the appearance of others. Nevertheless, considering the circumstances a couple of days later, I think that your decision was the right one. I of course still have the hope that your example may animate other Brazilian physicists, although they would have to work very hard to build up those connections you had to the leading LQG people (or to other groups for that matter). But I also have the advice that if you should find yourself ever in a situation of “saudade” for your past activities then please return. It is not necessary to become enslaved by a weblog, it is not like a pet which needs to be constantly fed.
com um beijo e um grande abraco
Bert
ps. I just saw that you have a new post which I will look at immediatly after sending this one

“Especially in the scientific community we should be able to realize that on the long run the winner won’t be the one who has the best rhetorical skills. Everything else is shortsighted, and hinders progress.” – Bee.

It is not shortsighted but PERFECTLY LOGICAL for leading physicists to simply rename the concept of “shortsightedness” as “TAKING ONE DAY AT A TIME”, ie, rely on name calling of alternatives (crackpots, cranks…), which enables them to keep what they perceive to be the “noise” level down (any alternative to M-theory = noise, by definition).

Similarly, the rulers of the church on 17 Feb 1600 burned the monk Brother Bruno to extinguish the noise he was making about astronomy. They weren’t shortsighted, they didn’t pay any penalty! They were long dead and burned by the time things changed. The censors only profit.

It is not shortsighted but PERFECTLY LOGICAL for leading physicists to simply rename the concept of “shortsightedness” as “TAKING ONE DAY AT A TIME”, ie, rely on name calling of alternatives (crackpots, cranks…), which enables them to keep what they perceive to be the “noise” level down (any alternative to M-theory = noise, by definition).

What do you think these ‘leading physicists’ are searching for? It is money, is it fame? Or is it wisdom, knowledge, insights into the mysterious ways our universe works. And what is the way to a fulfilled life? It is my believe that many researchers have just lost track of their original motivations to become a scientist. And it is awfully easy to loose out of sight what you were really looking for if you are faced with what I like to call ‘reality constraints’ : you need a job, a place to sleep, income to get your family through. It hurts me if I talk to my colleagues and many, too many of them, tell me they’d rather work on this and that, but they are sitting on that boring grant number xyz, and they need to come up with a publication on a topic that’s completely outdated since at least a decade. This IS unnecessary, and it is due to a mismanagement in our community, which can be improved. And if we don’t do so, it IS shortsighted on every level you can think of: start with Bush’s prime concern, the international competitiveness. It’s not going to be helpful in any regard if theoretical physicists call each other names, and all advertisement in Nature, Discover or Physics Today isn’t going to make a promising and promising theory into reality.

There is something at odds with the values in our society, more seriously though in the US, and it reflects not only in science. It is not logical to follow this path. Do I really have to point out that money and a high citation index doesn’t make you happy?